Desperate Duchesses by Eloisa James Read Free Book Online Page B

did meet someone. I should like to marry him. In fact, I have made up my mind to it.”
    “How useful,” Jemma said. “Love at first sight. I’m sure it must be most delicious. I would quite welcome it myself. I’ve fal en in love many times but never without thoroughly discussing the impulse with my closest friends.”
    Her brother snorted. “Not to mention your less-than-close friends and the other half of Paris. Although I thought it was love at first sight between Delacroix and yourself. Al Paris thought it was.”
    Jemma looked insulted. “Absolutely not! I spoke to each of my intimate friends before I al owed myself to feel a patch of affection for the man. That is my invariable practice. A man about whom one knows nothing is invariably boring or diseased.”
    “There you have it, Lady Roberta. You might want to rethink your love at first sight,” Damon said.
    “I do know quite a lot about him,” Roberta said shyly.
    “If there is one thing in the world that I love it’s a chal enge,” Jemma said. “The bigger the chal enge, the better!”
    Roberta took a deep breath. And told them.
    She was answered by silence.

Chapter 4
That afternoon
    H arriet, Duchess of Berrow, hadn’t been in London for a year, and she hadn’t been to Beaumont House in at least eight. It was just the same, of course: a huge, jumbled assortment of mul ioned windows and towers that had no place in London. Terraces sprawled on two sides, in blatant defiance of the properly contained attitude of a townhouse. It looked as if it had been picked up in Northamptonshire, transported by a giant’s hand to London, and plopped down on the street. The other houses around it
    —elegantly built in the Portland stone everyone preferred—looked positively affronted at having to reside beside such a monstrosity.
    The last time she’d been here Benjamin had been alive. He’d run up the stairs, always ahead of her, and banged the knocker himself.
    Then, Benjamin had leapt ahead of her in every way, and now footmen were the only men who accompanied her to parties.
    The door opened and she gave herself a mental shake. The last thing she wanted to do was lower Jemma’s spirits.
    Benjamin was gone, had been gone these many months and after she did just one thing in his memory—just the one—she would forget him. Put him away in her memories, or whatever it is you do with a dead husband.
    Truly, a dead husband was an inconvenient presence, she realized, not for the first time.
    The butler led her to a smal dining room and then stood to the side. “The Duchess of—” he intoned. Suddenly he lunged forward, words forgotten.
    Jemma was standing on a chair, with her back to them. She was in the process of unhooking a very large painting from the wal . Even as they watched she staggered back, her heel on the very edge of the seat, the huge frame waving in the air.
    “Your Grace!” the butler shouted. He caught the huge gold frame just as it began toppling toward the ground.
    Harriet rushed forward as wel , just in time to stand directly under Jemma as she fel off the chair. They both hit the ground with a whoosh as their hoops swel ed up around them. Simultaneously the butler lost his grip on the painting and it crashed into a sideboard.
    “Oh no,” Jemma said, laughing. “Is that Harriet?”
    Harriet scrambled to her feet. Jemma’s butler was shouting, presumably for a footman.
    “It is indeed I,” she said, smiling down at Jemma. Her friend had changed; her beauty had a modish edge that was a long way from Harriet’s childhood memories. But the sleek blonde hair, the deep lip and most of al , her litup, intel igent eyes, those were the same.
    With one practiced slap, Jemma col apsed her right pannier and then rol ed to that side to get up. Harriet held out a hand.
    With another whoosh, Jemma’s panniers exploded as she stood up and there she was: as sophisticated and elegant a French lady as Harriet could imagine.
    She swal owed her up